


If You Follow Me, I Will Follow You to the Unknown

by CloudAtlas



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Community: be_compromised, Different Call, First Meetings, Gen, Mentions of Rape, Trust, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eventually he made up his mind; trust breeds trust after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Follow Me, I Will Follow You to the Unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> This was written in response to the prompt "telling stories in the dark" by inkvoices over at the [be_compromised Promptathon of Magic and Joy 2013](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/318314.html). Title comes from Apollo 13 by the Tears.

Clint and Natasha never shared personal information with anyone; never talked about their pasts, or their hopes (few as they were) or their futures (however bleak they seemed). These secrets they shared only with each other, in the dead of night, when the darkness obscured their faces and hid their expressions, their scars, their tears.

It started on the night they met – or rather, the night he didn’t kill her. She was sat pressed up into the corner of the room, with both him and all exits in her field of vision, looking like if she closed her eyes, she’d never wake up again. And Clint didn’t know how to convince her that he was for real – for all that she’d tentatively decided to trust him (for now), decades of conditioned mistrust can’t be overridden with a nod – so he just stared back; so long and so hard that the silence became oppressive, that the shadows lengthened and her face became soft white and deep, deep black, that day turned to dusk turned to night, total in the way that only nights in the middle of nowhere can get.

Eventually he made up his mind; trust breeds trust after all.

“When I was six my father beat me so hard that I blacked out. I woke up in the cupboard under the stairs with 3 fractured ribs and a concussion.”

The look of shock on her face was almost comical, but only almost. Clint knew that what was shocking to her was not the horror of Clint’s childhood – if her file, admittedly thin by SHIELD standards, was anything close to accurate, his childhood paled in comparison to her own – but the fact that he had shared this information with her. Information that was incredibly personal and could be easily used as leverage.

She didn’t say anything, but her shoulders relaxed minutely, and when he woke up the next morning and both of them were still alive – if rather stiff – he figured he’d done the right thing.

_

Natasha Romanov repaid him in kind, two nights later in a shithole house on the edge of the city, with no electricity and 45 minutes to extraction.

“The first time I had sex because I wanted to, I was 22.”

Clint’s insides turned to ice, and though he knew the answer, he choked out a “What happened before that then?”, hoping and praying with everything he had that this wasn’t what it sounded like.

Natasha just looked at him, the whites of her eyes seeming to glow from the light of the rising moon outside.

And suddenly Clint knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’d done the right thing. And this time he wasn’t talking about his little trip down memory lane.


End file.
